1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a karaoke scoring apparatus for evaluating singing skill of a karaoke singer based on actual singing voice vocalized by the singer along with instrumental accompaniment of karaoke music. More particularly, the present invention relates to a karaoke scoring apparatus for detecting score data necessary for scoring the singing skill of the karaoke singer by comparing the actual singing voice of the singer with a melody of the karaoke music. The actual singing voice is vocalized along with the accompaniment of the karaoke music generated by a MIDI tone generator.
2. Description of Related Art
The conventional karaoke apparatus utilizes a musical sound player which reproduces karaoke music from a magnetic tape on which the karaoke music is recorded in the form of an analog audio signal. With the advance in electronics technology, the magnetic tape is replaced by a CD (Compact Disk) or an LD (Laser Disk). The audio signal recorded in a disk media is changed from analog to digital. The data recorded on these disks contains not only music data but also a variety of other items of data including image data and lyrics data.
Recently, communication-type karaoke apparatuses become popular, in which, instead of using the CD or the LD, music data and other karaoke data are delivered through a communication line such as a regular telephone line or an ISDN line. The delivered data is processed by a tone generator and a sequencer. These communication-type karaoke apparatuses include a non-storage type in which music data is delivered every time karaoke play is requested, and a storage-type in which the delivered music data is stored in an internal storage device such as a hard disk unit and read out from the internal storage device for karaoke play upon request. Currently, the storage-type karaoke apparatus is dominating the karaoke market mainly because of its lower running cost.
Some of the above-mentioned karaoke apparatuses have a karaoke scoring device designed to evaluate singing skill of a karaoke singer based on voice of the singer vocalized along with the accompaniment of karaoke music. The conventional karaoke scoring device detects pitch and level of the singing voice of the karaoke singer, and checks the detected pitch and level with respect to stability and continuity of live vocal performance for evaluation and scoring.
However, the evaluation and scoring by the conventional karaoke scoring device are made independently of tempo information and melody information contained in the karaoke music data. There is no correlation between the actual vocal performance and the accompanying karaoke music. In the conventional scoring device, the evaluation is made without any relationship with melody information and tempo information contained in the karaoke music data. Namely, the conventional scoring device simply evaluates only the way of singing of the karaoke singer regardless of regulated progression of the karaoke music. Therefore, the conventional karaoke scoring device cannot draw distinction between good singing performance well synchronized with karaoke accompaniment and poor singing made out of tune. The conventional scoring device can evaluate only physical voicing skill of a karaoke singer, and consequently cannot evaluate the singing skill in musical relationship with the melody information contained in the karaoke music data.